The newly sworn-in Justice Minister, Yaakov Ne’eman, held a discreet working meeting with Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch Thursday night at the Supreme Court. Most of the confidantes of both the minister and the judge were not informed that the meeting would take place, and journalists only learned about it after it was over.
The two discussed the heavy caseload on the court system in general and on the Supreme Court in particular. It is not known whether they also discussed the ongoing delay in the appointment of new judges, which was due to the rift between Beinisch and Ne’eman’s predecessor, Prof. Daniel Friedmann.
The Committee for the Selection of Judges needs to be convened in order to carry out the procedure. However, the committee has not met for five months, because Beinisch refused to convene it. Observers explained that Beinisch wanted Friedmann out of the way before she convened the committee.
In its last session, the committee appointed two new Supreme Court judges at Friedmann’s behest, whom Beinisch disapproved of.
Nachi Eyal, Head of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, wrote a letter to Ne’eman Friday in which he called on the minister to immediately convene the committee because the selection of new judges for all tiers of the court system, from the Magistrates’ Courts to the Supreme Court, was essential in order to reduce the backlog in the courts.
32 judges short
Former Minister Friedmann has estimated, in an affidavit filed with the Supreme Court, that there is currently a shortage of 32 judges on all levels.
The Forum noted that the committee stopped meeting after President Beinisch declared, in October, that it cannot convene because the government is a transition government (observers noted at the time, however, that Beinisch herself was appointed when a transition government was in power).
For the Committee for Selection of Judges to meet, however, its members – some of whom are appointed by the government and others by the Knesset – must be selected, too.
Now that the new government has been established, Eyal wrote Ne’eman, “We ask that you make an extreme effort to complete the appointment of the [government’s] representatives and the Knesset’s representatives as soon as possible.”
Eyal said that there was no point in putting the matter off until after the Pesach holiday and asked that it be raised in next week’s cabinet meeting. He also asked that the Knesset Speaker convene the parliament for a special session during the spring recess in order to select its representatives.
Otherwise, he warned, the result would be that the committee will remain inactive for a total of eight months, and the judges will be unable to serve the public.